Life is a journey. Every single step leads to enlightenment.

Synthesis vs. Analysis

I have gained a new perspective from reading this comment posted at AnswerBag. What led me to this page was a triggering comment by a guy friend yesterday, about “women are complicated” (from his experience, I confirmed). I could analyze on and on, I would or may never get what he had in mind. I could have a bunch of questions for him to answer, but then I would become so aggressive or opinionated. Good or bad?
Well, I am very convinced by this excerpt that sometimes instead of analyzing we’d just accept the facts or be aware of the happenings. A kid in me always wants me to ask why, ponder into the reasons behind certain incidents. But over the years, I’ve learned to accept the answers, to just be aware of the facts to what happened, not to ask why too much. Awareness refers to knowing or finding out the why, the what, it takes some problem solving (again, analytical) skills, I believe, and then we have to understand that is the how of the matter. The final picture is what we hold as a lesson or just an acknowledgment. And now I find the word for this process, “synthesis”.

Complicated and simple are actually two sides of the same coin: in order to see complexity, you have to have the notion of simplicity, and vice-versa. So neither complexity NOR simplicity have any independent reality of their own.

But so what? That’s not really what we humans are concerned about when this question comes up, is it? What we want to really know is “why am I confused, and how can I know what’s important and what to focus on?” There’s an anxiety associated with this sense that life is so complex that it’s pulling us in many directions at once and we can’t get “centered”.

There are two opposite capacities that we have as humans: analysis and synthesis. Analysis is based in the mind’s ability to separate things from each other: to form concepts, draw boundaries, build models of relationships, etc. This discriminative ability is what makes life look complicated: WE chop reality up into lots of little pieces and study them in isolation, and the number of such pieces we can create is actually infinite.

So if we ONLY have analysis running (without any synthesis), we end up with a distressingly LARGE supply of pieces to study.

Synthesis is different: synthesis puts pieces together into larger wholes. Most of us are not nearly as good at synthesis as we are at analysis, but many of us can do it well in specific areas: someone who has really “mastered” an art form, craft, or sport is practicing synthesis — they have “become one” with their chosen discipline, creating a synthesis in which “self and paint”, or “self and instrument”, or “self and ball” have ceased to be two completely separate things, and have merged into a larger whole.

From the outside, such a synthesis may look like magic, and in a way it is. But it’s more valuable to see the deeper process at work: the collecting of bits and pieces and restoring their original wholeness, prior to discrimination / separation — that’s what resolves our anxiety about complexity.

So why does THIS explanation sound so complicated? Because the mind which analyzes wants to cling to thorough explanations, and having such an explanation helps it to relax a bit. What we’re really talking about in practical terms is learning to be aware (synthesis) instead of continuing to focus on thinking (analysis).

Awareness is synthesis: if you want life to be simpler, without going down some strange tunnel like throwing out 90% of your stuff, learn to be more aware. That will solve the life-is-complicated problem where it really matters.

I used to have this saying “Life is complicated already. Simplify it.” Since I’ve practiced awareness and synthesized all that life has offered, yes, “life is short. Life has its own meaningful seasons”.
Next time I would just say “That is so her”. Or, “that is just him”. The choice we make, the life we take. We can choose to accept him/her, but can’t change who he/she is.
On a Christian TV station, the hostess always says bye with “Life is fragile. Take care of each other.”
So, using the opening sentence I can conclude it in this quote: “Complicated and simple are actually two sides of the same coin – the key is you can flip your coin.”

Advertisements

Rate this:

Like this:

LikeLoading...

Related

2 Responses

An Engineer’s Prospective:
Life is complex. It has both real and imaginary part (just like complex number). The imaginary part comes from human imagination, which actually makes human life complex. Most of the other species on this planet do not have imagination capabilities, so their life is fairly simple (just real part of the equation). Human life could be made simple by not to imagine at all, but then there won’t be any fun left in life either.

Like your comment though. Imagination! It is a controversial word. See how human mind evolves. But humans can control their imaginative mind. So, with the same token, humans can simplify the things they complicate.